Me with my missing teeth

When I was three years old I knocked out two of my front teeth while playing on the swings. Here is what my mom wrote in her diary:

Our three-year old Raelyn recently tried to copy the big kids by jumping out of the swing before it stopped. Result: She is eligible to sing all I want for Christmas is my two front teeth.

It is funny how memory works. I thought I was swinging on my stomach and fell out face first. But that note of my mom makes it sound like I was trying to jump out of the swing and didn’t navigate the landing. Now I wonder what really happened. Usually the closer to the time something happened the more likely correct. I also thought that it was my two front teeth but the one photo I found it show one front tooth and then the tooth next to it. I guess this is also a lesson in how facts can get shifted around in time.

I also remember getting really sick and tire of the song, “All I want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth.” It was several years before my permanent teeth came in so every Christmas it was the same old thing.

I did have celebrating this incident in my early childhood on my 50 for 50 list but I thought that I would celebrate it by finding a swing set and having a swing. But instead I knocked off part of my tooth eating a sandwich with crusty sourdough bread. At first I thought that somehow a rock got into my bread. But the truth came out a few bites later when I realized a chunk of my tooth was missing. I think the dentist called it number 12. So my 50 for 50 this week was getting a crown on tooth #12. I’m guessing it was a lot less painful this time around.